Robert Mapplethorpe - Evening Editions New York Wednesday, October 26, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Catalogue Essay

    RM: I think that the flowers have a certain---
    JK: Are sexy?
    RM: Not sexy, but weird. I don't want to use the word "weird," but they don't look like anyone else's flowers. They have a certain archness to them a certain edge that flowers generally do not have.
    JK: Do you think they're threatening?
    RM: That's not the exact word. But they're not fun flowers.
    JK: No, they're not.
    RM: I don't know how to describe them, but I don't think they're very different from body parts.
    Janet Kardon and Robert Mapplethorpe The Perfect Moment, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Philadelphia, p 25

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Mapplethorpe

    American • 1946 - 1989

    After studying drawing, painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in the 1960s, Robert Mapplethorpe began experimenting with photography while living in the notorious Chelsea Hotel with Patti Smith. Beginning with Polaroids, he soon moved on to a Hasselblad medium-format camera, which he used to explore aspects of life often only seen behind closed doors.

    By the 1980s Mapplethorpe's focus was predominantly in the studio, shooting portraits, flowers and nudes. His depiction of the human form in formal compositions reflects his love of classical sculpture and his groundbreaking marriage of those aesthetics with often challenging subject matter. Mapplethorpe's style is present regardless of subject matter — from erotic nudes to self-portraits and flowers — as he ceaselessly strove for what he called "perfection of form."

    View More Works

43

Hyacinth

1987
Photogravure, on Arches Cover paper, with full margins,
I. 32 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. (83.2 x 81.9 cm);
S. 45 x 38 3/8 in. (114.3 x 97.5 cm)

signed, dated `87' and numbered 12/30 in pencil (there were also 11 artist's proofs), published by Graphicstudio USF, Tampa, Florida (with their blindstamp), in very good condition, framed.

Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000 

Evening Editions

26 October 2011
New York